Werner (noble family)

Werner was the name of four successive counts who gained great influence in the empire during the reign of the Salic kings related to them in the 11th century. Their gender came from Swabia and gained increasing influence in Hesse . At least since Werner I, the family held the hereditary imperial office of primicerius et signifer regis , the pioneer and standard bearer of the king, which was connected to the imperial fief of the castle and city of Grüningen (today Markgröningen ).

Four Count Werner as Reichssturmfähnriche

• Werner "von Winterthur", who came from the Swabian nobility, was appointed by King Konrad II in 1024 as Vogt of the Kaufungen monastery and in 1027 after the death of the last Konradin in Hessengau as Gaugraf in Northern Hesse. He and his descendants were then referred to as the Count of Maden . In the following years, Count Werner also acquired property in the Lahngau , including the County of Ruchesloh . Werner I fell on August 22, 1040 during the campaign of King Henry III. against Břetislav I of Bohemia.

• His son and successor as Reichssturmfähnrich, Werner II. " Vom Neckargau ", fell together with his brother Adalbert II. Von Winterthur and their cousin Burkhard II. Von Nellenburg on June 18, 1053 in the Battle of the Normans near Civitate . Werner II was one of the leaders of the German contingent, mainly recruited from Swabia, in the devastatingly defeated army of Pope Leo IX, who was related to them .

• Werner III. († 1065) was probably the first to also call himself "Werner von Grüningen", probably to indicate that he was a member of the family who inherited the office of Reichssturmfähnrichs and the associated county of Grüningen. In addition to the dowager empress Agnes von Poitou and the archbishop Adalbert von Bremen, he had considerable influence on the young King Henry IV and imperial politics, but was slain in a scuffle in Ingelheim in 1065 at the age of less than 25 .

• Werner IV “von Grüningen” accompanied Heinrich IV. And Heinrich V. Due to the successful consolidation policy of his ancestors and inheritances, he had extensive property in Hessengau and Lahngau, in the Lorch and Worms area as well as in Neckargau , Thurgau and Alsace . He also had the bailiffs over the monasteries Breitenau , Hasungen , Kaufungen and Zwiefalten as well as the Fritzlar monastery . When he died in 1121 without a male successor, the Reichssturmfähnrich was the most powerful count in Hesse.

estate

With the exception of the Wittum of his wife Gisela, Werner IV bequeathed his Hessian property to the Breitenau monastery. His Hessian feudal rights initially fell to Giso IV. From the Counts of the Gisonen , who had extensive property in Oberlahngau, but after the death of his son Giso V in 1137 it came to Landgrave Ludwig I via Hedwig , Gisos IV's heir . of Thuringia .

The county of Ruchesloh, on the other hand, fell partly to the Lords of Merenberg at Gleiberg Castle and partly to the Bilsteiners , whose share then passed to Ludwig von Thuringia through inheritance. The Merenbergs sold part of their rights (the southern part of the county) in 1237 to Archbishop Siegfried III. of Mainz , which subsequently led to a long dispute between the archbishopric and the Landgraviate of Hesse .

Various sexes benefited from the Swabian estate, including the lords and later counts of Württemberg .

See also

• Count of Winterthur
• Kyburg (noble family)
• Count of Nellenburg
• History of Grüningen
• List of noble families named Werner

literature

• Johann Samuel Publication : General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts , Volume 2, Leipzig 1830, p. 166 link to google.books
• Ludwig Friedrich Heyd : History of the Counts of Gröningen . Stuttgart 1829.
• Paul Kläui : The Swabian origin of Count Werner . In: Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies , Vol. 69, 1958, pp. 9-18.
• Erich König, KO Müller (ed.): The Zwiefaltener Chronicles Ortliebs and Berthold . Stuttgart 1941.
• Wilhelm Christian Lange:  Werner IV . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 42, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1897, pp. 22-27.
• Karl Hermann May: Reichsbanneramt and right of litigation from a Hessian perspective . Münster / Cologne 1952.
• Max Perlbach : The campaign of Heinrich III. against Bohemia 1039-1041 . In: Research on German History , Volume 10, Göttingen, 1870, PDF
• Gustav Freiherr Schenk zu Schweinsberg: "The Wernerische Grafenhaus in Neckargau, Hessengau, Lahngau and Worms." In: Correspondence sheet of the general association of German history and antiquity associations , 23/7 (1875), pp. 49-52.
• Stefan Schipperges: The Bempflinger contract of 1089/90 . Esslingen am Neckar 1990.

Remarks

1. ↑ Max Perlbach , The Wars of Heinrich III. against Bohemia. 1039-1041. Dieterich'sche Buchhandlung, Göttingen 1870, p. 446ff PDF (1.63 MB) .
2. ↑ Source: RI III, 5.2 n.1078 Regesta Imperii Online .
3. ↑ Source: Annales von Lambert von Hersfeld , translation by Ludwig Friedrich Hesse a. Wilhelm Wattenbach: The yearbooks of Lambert von Hersfeld , Leipzig 1893, pp. 65–76. Digitized
4. ↑ Example: Comes "Wernerus de Grueninche [n]" or "Werinher de Gruoninge" as a witness in a certificate issued by Henry IV on August 3, 1101 for the Prüm Abbey . Source: Heinrich Beyer (ed.), Document book on the history of the Middle Rhine territories , volume 1, Koblenz 1860, p. 459f, no. 403 Google digitized .